Big Find Friday: A voice from the past

30 May 2014

Here at the Library of Virginia, we love seeing patrons locate records that answer a long-held question, fill in branches of the family tree, or otherwise connect the present to the past. We recently began collecting such stories from patrons eager to share their discoveries, gathering them as part of our “My Big Find” project. You’ll see these stories popping up in various LVA outreach outlets, including here at Out of the Box in an occasional segment, beginning today, which we are calling “Big Find Friday.”

It’s fairly common for someone to say that something–a work of art or literature, a photograph, or perhaps an archival record like the ones we preserve here—“speaks to” him or her. In one of our latest “My Big Find” submissions, a patron found that expression to be particularly appropriate. With a little help from Archives Reference Coordinator Minor Weisiger, patron Jennie Howe discovered a record of the 1800 naturalization of her third great-grandfather, weaver Robert Nisbet (1746-1812). As she studied the document, she noticed that Nisbet’s birthplace of Ayr, Scotland, had been recorded as “the County of Ier in Scotland.” Howe explains that “I felt as if the over 200-year-old paper literally spoke to me, as the clerk recorded the ‘Ier’ he heard for the ‘Ayr’ that Nisbet said with his Gaelic accent.”

Has the past “spoken” to you through discoveries made at the Library of Virginia? Let us know! Submit your story using this online form, and we just may share it via LVA’s website, social media, or Broadside magazine.